Comedy may be a matter of taste, but some form of drag seems to tickle almost everyone's funny bone.

"There is the great divide between males and females," says Michael Freeny, a sex therapist of 25 yearswho practices in Winter Park, Fla. The comedy comes, he says, in how drag performers "either can or cannot carry off" the impersonation.

One of the great show-biz ironies is that even homophobic types often get a kick out of drag. That's especially true if the female impersonation is not so precise that it's sexy and, therefore, potentially threatening.

"If you've ever been to a transvestite show," says Freeny, "the most beautiful women you've ever seen aren't."

Aren't women, that is. "And that is very distressing to homophobic men," he says.

Not distressing, however, are the likes of Milton Berle, America's Uncle Miltie in the early days of television. Berle had only to put on a dress and some lipstick to elicit belly laughs from the vast American public.

More recently, Australia's Barry Humphries, as the flamboyant Dame Edna Everage, has been enjoyed by all sorts of people. So have the occasional drag sketches on England's "Monty Python's Flying Circus," Canada's "The Kids in the Hall" and our homegrown "Saturday Night Live."

Sans the sexuality

"There is no [sexual] attraction level there," says Donald F. Reuter, author of "Fabulous! A Loving, Luscious, and Lighthearted Look at Film from the Gay Perspective." "The sexuality is taken out of it completely."

On the other hand, not all gay viewers are comfortable with all forms of drag.

"The drag culture for gay men is one thing," Reuter notes. "But the putting of a hirsute, macho-male type in a dress because it's funny is almost like the minstrel show thing.

"I think gays are being made fun of."

"Connie and Carla" is different from most drag comedies because the main "drag" performers are actually women.

Played by Nia Vardalos ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding") and Toni Collette ("Muriel's Wedding"), Connie and Carla are a dinner-theater singing duo from Chicago who find themselves on the run from mobsters. They end up in the Los Angeles area -- specifically, in heavily gay West Hollywood -- where they masquerade as female impersonators.

Because they're actually women, Connie and Carla are extremely good at, so to speak, impersonating women. They easily land jobs singing at a gay bar and quickly become a sensation.

Although our heroines are not, technically speaking, female impersonators, the movie taps into drag culture and features several men in female garb. But whether it's men impersonating women or women impersonating men impersonating women, the source of the humor is often the same.

"A lot of this drag iconography is based on a really, really small group of females," says Reuter. "We're talking that '50s female ideal -- '50s into '60s."

In other words: big hair, full breasts and tiny waists.

"That was the period in straight, mainstream culture that was exaggerating the female," adds Reuter. "Men were men and women were women -- and women looked like Marilyn Monroe, even though they didn't."

"In comedy," Freeny reflects, "you definitely have to go for a clear stereotype. If you had a modern, androgynous character, the comedy would be lost."

If the traditional drag image has been relatively consistent, gender-bender film comedies have changed through the years.

A cultural gauge

"It's interesting because you can trace so much of our culture -- not just gay culture but just culture in general -- through these movies," says Reuter.

Cary Grant appeared stiff and uncomfortable when he donned a skirt and a horsehair wig in "I Was a Male War Bride," a 1949 comedy whose title tells you pretty much all you need to know.

Not so the stars of "La Cage aux Folles," the 1978 French hit about a drag performer and his partner. It was popular enough internationally to spawn two sequels and a 1996 American adaptation, "The Birdcage," which features Nathan Lane as the frock-wearing counterpart to Robin Williams' more conventionally dressed character.

`Mrs. Doubtfire'

A few years earlier, however, Williams had put on the dress for "Mrs. Doubtfire" of 1993.

In several films by director John Waters, notably including 1988's "Hairspray," the male actor/icon known as Divine played female roles. But in those films, the female impersonation isn't acknowledged in the plot. We're simply asked to accept him as a woman.